There are no pronoun labels in Matrix. We often look to MSC1769 as the solution to this problem, but little progress has been made and even with 1769, there would still need to be a representation of pronouns.
Rather than creating new precedents like MSC1769
and waiting indefintley for them, this solution relies
on extending the m.room.member state event with a new optional field:
m.pronouns.en.
The name of this field uses a ISO 639-1
code to classify a set of pronouns for the english language.
m.pronouns.en is a list of pronouns in order of user preference.
The pronouns each have the required fields subject
& object
as well as the optional fields possessive,
possessive-determiner,
reflexive and singular.
These are directly inspired from the site https://pronoun.is,
which gives examples for how to use a set of pronouns.
This set of pronouns only works with the english language
and cannot be used to specify pronouns for other languages
or blindly copied to do so.
A single text field can be considered problematic,
especially with neopronouns, as it can be hard for someone
who is new to a set of neopronouns to derive the others from just the
subject & object pronouns. We believe that specifying only
the subject and object pronouns can unfortunately lead to neopronouns
being ignored when referring to someone who has them.
Specifying each pronoun means that clients and bots can also use
the pronouns when referring to other users.
The following gives an example for the pronouns They/Them:
{
"m.pronouns.en":[
{
"subject":"they",
"object":"them",
"possessive":"theirs",
"possessive-determiner":"their",
"reflexive":"themselves",
"singular":"themself"
}
]
}
The author is not a linguist and knows nothing about natural language.
Changing avatars and displayname is already a cause of concern for users who are in lots of rooms as it takes a long time on Synapse to update the member event for all the rooms.
The profile directory may also leak someone's pronouns that are used only in certain contexts and out them.
This is very english centric and only specifies pronouns for english.
Pronouns could be used maliciously by inserting abusive text in their place.
-
An extensible state event combined with MSC1769.
-
An alternative involving per room profiles and spaces MSC3189.
No considertion taken so far.
While this MSC is not considered stable by the specification, implementations must use
ge.applied-langua.msc3755 as a prefix to denote the unstable functionality. For example,
the m.pronouns.en field would instead be ge.applied-langua.msc3755.pronouns.en instead.
None known.